The EmberTribe
SEO Methodology

We’ve been doing this for a long time (some of us for nearly 15 years!).
We have found that establishing a shared language with our clients is crucial to align our expectations.

SEO = Tactics

(Search Engine Optimization)
The actual marketing channel is
“organic search”, or more broadly, “search”.

More specifically, SEO is...

A collection of tactics that can be performed once
or ongoing to drive more targeted traffic to a web property.

Why the search channel
is so powerful?

In a word: intent.


Intent can be understood as simply understanding what your audience wants. It’s possible to infer
intent for targeting a paid social campaign. Particularly if you pay to supplement your audience
targeting capabilities with datasets from third party providers.


But no other channel is as explicit and clear as search when it comes to targeting intent (for now).

Marketing is about giving...

The right message

At the right time

To the right people

Search is often able to check all three of those boxes at once.

The Bonus?

Your initial investment in this channel pays dividends over many years without being dependent on ad spend to keep running or on an auction to provide a favorable cost environment.

Key Principles of SEO for EmberTribe

The big picture of what
goes into our “SEO Mix”

Technical optimization

Build a strong base that will scale
sustainably with the goals in mind.

Content Strategy & Production

Understanding the keyword
opportunity across the buyer’s
journeys and executing it.

Strategic Link Building

A surgical approach to achieving
organic rankings and visibility for
key topics that have direct
business value.

Our SEO approach has a focus on sustainable growth.

1

Technical Optimization

We begin with a technical audit and review of over 140 parameters related to site health and SEO performance.

The goal here is to remove any “land mines” that would drag or otherwise mute results from our efforts

Main areas of focus include:
Crawlability
Site Performance
Internal Linking
Page speed/usability metrics
Link profile review/toxicity audit

The main deliverable is a review of key findings and a prioritized queue of recommended next steps.

2

Content Strategy & Production

Our approach to content spans :

Keyword research
Competitor analysis
Emerges from audience research

Most SEO professionals jump right into looking for the highest-searched keywords in your niche.

We believe that behind every keyword, there’s a real, live human. So it makes sense to start by studying that human and work back from there. We look at communities they frequent, questions they ask, people they follow.

This step alone helps expand the universe of potential keywords by at least 50%.

The result?

Less competition for rankings,
more qualified traffic
faster scale.
Another mistake we see among SEOs is jumping right into new content creation. But for established sites,
it’s possible that the fastest route to generating more traffic comes from optimizing existing content.

It’s also a crucial step to avoid what’s known as “keyword cannibalization”. In other words, if there’s
already a strong article that’s targeting a specific topic, we don’t want to create another one that competes with it.
On a more technical note:

From a content planning perspective, EmberTribe organizes according to a topical cluster model of information architecture. These so-called “clusters” consist of different articles or media which all link together offering a robust library for a given topic and then link back to one or more “pillar” pages at the center.

3

Strategic Link Building

While we offer strategic guidance on large-scale link efforts through digital PR, our done-for-you service caters to a surgical approach for supporting key pages that are difficult to use as “bait” for attracting links, yet have a significant commercial impact for the client.

For example, product category pages or service offering pages that bring in searchers with a high buying intent.

Our process at a high level:
We build link “roadmaps” that prioritize high-revenue impact pages and optimize for ROI.
We identify topically relevant and authoritative partner sites suitable for a guest post (typically with a domain authority of 30 or more).
We conduct outreach to secure placement
What about

Cluster Magic ?

ClusterMagic is a breakthrough service that we created to help clients multiply their results from search by delivering 2 years worth of content in 12 weeks.

What’s the process look like behind ClusterMagic?

(4 roles involved in the content production)
1. SEO strategist:
The most improtant step is to identify opportunities in search that are low competition. This research leverages proprietary tools and specifically, an algorithm we’ve developed for identifying the proper balance between the following attributes:

Search Intent

Identifying a match between the content type (a long-form blog article) and search intent.

Search Intent

Identifying a match between the content type (a long-form blog article) and search intent.

Search Intent

Identifying a match between the content type (a long-form blog article) and search intent.

Search Intent

Identifying a match between the content type (a long-form blog article) and search intent.
2. Researcher:
Based on the primary keyword targets, the researcher begins the process of building a robust brief and outline designed to outrank the competition. In this phase we leverage the power of AI to uncover new angles and current gaps among competitors.
3. Writer:
Now equipped with a detailed outline, client brief, and a list of external references, the writer begins composing the text of the article. While the human writer composes text, the power of AI surfaces semantic recommendations (known as “NLP entities”) along with internal link suggestions. This strengthens the topical authority of the article and improves its chances to dominate the top rankings.
4. Editor:
Finally, a dedicated editor reviews the article for readability and continuity with the client brief and requirements. The editor ensures that the piece passes a Copyscape check for uniqueness before passing it through to the client for publishing.

Testimonials

With over 10 years of experience and 80 million in ad spend under our belts, we know how to guide businesses from fizzle to sizzle.

"I tried one company before you guys but you guys are better. And you're all good looking too."

Lisa Vigliorolo

Founder of Fusion Belts
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"Embertribe has been incredible to work with. Not only are they knowledgeable and the best at their craft but they care about you and your business. Highly recommend!"

Seth Bunch

Founder of Xylem Woodworks
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"EmberTribe has been an incredible ally in our growth strategy. In a short period of time they were able to scale up our ad budget 200%, while decreasing the unit cost for each additional sign up. We see them as an extension of our internal marketing team, which, for a fast growing company, gives us tremendous leverage when building out and scaling new user channels."

Duncan Street

Co-founder, Qeepsake
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“One of the things I love most about working with EmberTribe which has been a standout from working with other companies is that there's a level of ownership that the team has in what we're doing that you really feel like they care."

Cody Barbo

Cofounder, Trust & Will
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"All around great team...The EmberTribe team really answered my technical questions without hesitation...Helped me understand where my business was lacking. It's hard to find companies nowadays that really go above and beyond."

Joey Hettler

Media and Marketing Coordinator at Altis
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"I tried one company before you guys but you guys are better. And you're all good looking too."

Lisa Vigliorolo

Founder of Fusion Belts
Learn more

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